Sometimes I feel bad for the kids of this era who don’t have the freedom we(I) had as kid in HS. 30+ years ago when there were no cellphones and no tracking we just left the house on Friday and Saturday nights and I guess our parents just hoped we would come home by curfew.
Many of our nights in HS started out a the local arcade that had foosball, pool etc.(think Dazed & Confused) Or we would go to the $1 movies. Then would drive around or cruise looking for stuff to do. Maybe someone knew about a party. But overall we had freedom. Our kids don’t have that.
Of course it wasn’t all just looking for trouble. There were football/basketball games to play in or go to as well.
I just can’t imagine my better half letting my D23 leave the house without a plan of where she is going and with who. And if plans change she better give updates.
My parents who definitely came from a different time themselves would let me go visit my brother at college and stay the night while I was in HS.
My friends and I do have a legendary story we still talk about to this day. My brother had become friends with some of the basketball players at college (a top 20 program). Bro had told us about a party at one of the player’s apartments. We drove down there remember we are still in HS, and knocked on the door. My brother wasn’t there but the guys from the team were cool enough to let us in and hangout for a time. My one friend was playing Tecmo Bowl(nintendo) with the starting point guard. We thought we were the coolest guys at the time.
When I was in HS, the nearest bowling alley had a dance club for the 16-20 year old set. My BF at the time was one of the dj’s and my friends and I literally lived there every weekend until we graduated.
It doesn’t seem like anything like that exists anymore and not just because of Covid. Unless D had friends over or a friend had kids to their house, she never had anything to do. Sure, they went to the movies once in a while but not that often. They just had a hard time finding something fun.
No dance clubs for the under 21 crowd where D was raised but she hung out with friends at their houses, went to football games, movies, and to restaurants. They also went to concerts, theater shows, camping, and lots of school events. I don’t think she felt like she was deprived in any way just because we knew where she was.
I don’t think she ever asked to go/do something where we said ‘no’. She was a good, trustworthy kid, as were her friends.
23 students are probably different than 22. I can’t recall exactly what we did a year ago. But D22 often is “going out with friends” on weekends. She’ll usually tell us she’s going to someone’s house, or a movie, or the football game, but we don’ inquire. We know who her friends are and trust that she’s responsible. At 18 and on her own at college in less than 6 months, it’s time for this transition. We may have been a bit more interested at 17/a year ago, but have generally trusted her judgement for several years.
Not much different than I recall in high school. But given the number of helicopter parent stories I’ve heard, the comments from my former HR department about calls from parents (these are college graduates from very good schools), etc., I realize this may be abnormal these days.
I still remember calling CMU sorting out a login/password issue she has with an account she needed for her HS math team, based at the school. I told the IT call center staff that I was calling for my daughter and it took them a while to ask/realize she was pre-college. I had assumed that telling them that a parent calling would have made it clear it wasn’t for a college student. Apparently, they regularly get support calls from student parents.
My town is small, 3 miles end to end, with a true Main Street cutting straight down the middle with stores and restaurants. The HS is smack in the middle as well, plus several sport fields. Kids go to games, go out to eat, we are a 15 mile drive to several large shopping malls, 3 ice rinks in under 5 miles, movie theater a couple of miles away. Almost all of our streets have sidewalks. Lots of backyard fires, I’d have 30 kids in my small backyard at least once a month. My kids were rarely home on weekends, unless their friends were over. Day trips down the shore during the summer were popular. My kids had full schedules, most had 3 season sports, a couple also danced, all had jobs. Once they had access to driving half apps at Applebees was popular.
My daughter had a circle of about 7 or so regular friends, with 3 or 4 available at any given time. Typically, they’d either meet at one friend’s house, or make plans to go to a cafe or the “hang-out” diner, or order food in, and eventually retreat to one’s friend house - sometimes including a planned stay-over.
Less often did it involve going to a local show production, or football game - and even less-often other “structured” activities. We knew all the girls as being responsible, caring and watching out for one another.
I thought this was going to be about “where do High School kids hang out”, but it seems like the intention was really more, “do you know where your high school kid hangs out”?
I do trust my D22 to come home when she said she would or to text or call if she’s not going to. (Also trust my adult friends and husband to text or call if their plans change, so same thing, really.) I do not know where D22 is every minute of her day. I have the ability to track her phone but rarely do. I’m not interested in being that kind of parent, but I do want to be able to find her if she ends up in a ditch on the side of the road so I am grateful for the technology if we ever need it one day. We usually use it together to find her phone when she has misplaced it somewhere in the house.
I usually chat with her after she comes home and ask if she had a good time and she often tells me where they went and what they did. They like to hang out in coffee shops (she prefers to do her homework there) and they love to go thrift shopping and to Taco Bell. Just regular high school stuff. She has sleepovers with her friends at their houses and I don’t really know what all they get up to, but they are good kids. She’s 18 and legally an adult as she is quick to remind me and she is more than ready to go to college and I won’t know where she is then or what she’s up to unless she cares to share which I hope she does.
But the literal answer to the question for my high schooler is, coffee shops, boba tea shops, thrift and vintage clothing stores, bookstores, friends’ houses, hikes, etc. She’s not a big sports fan so doesn’t go to games or anything like that.
When my son wasn’t playing sports himself (most of his recreational time) a popular weekend activity was going to watch friends play broomball. The thing I hated about that was the games were always ungodly late! And the ice rink was way across town so I hated that night driving.
We raised 2 daughters in a large east coast city. The oldest is currently a senior in college and the youngest is a freshman in college. The oldest did not have any tracking device on her phone. She was taking the subway, buses, cabs, uber, and walking starting in middle school. Kids went to parties, concerts, restaurants, the lakes, by the river, playgrounds, and just plain walking around the city.
She did send “proof of life” photos to us. Her friends are so used to this that they all still send those photos to me when they are all out together.
Our youngest was in high school during covid and would have been afforded the same opportunities had she not been dealing with covid lockdowns.
Our oldest trained in ballet and modern dance and was often in the studio, but they always went out for food or something social after. So, I don’t think she missed out on anything other than football games (since our school did not have a team).
